"The best lack all conviction
and the worst are full of passionate intensity"

W.B Yeats - The Second Coming

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

You Do The Math

Maurice Iemma’s announcement that more carriages will provide an extra 1200 seats on our trains shows just how hopeless our state’s transport planning and management has become (Petrol prices push commuters onto trains, SMH Online June 24).

Iemma’s trumpet was blowing as Transport Minister Watkins was telling us that rail passengers have increased by over 4% in the last twelve months - on a rail network that carries over a million people a day, this means an extra 40,000 people; all squeezing into Iemma’s extra 1200 seats. With no end in sight for escalating fuel prices it can only be assumed that rail patronage will continue to increase exponentially. It is time that the NSW Government, particularly the Premier, the Transport Minister and the Treasurer, admitted that the RailCorp network is vastly inadequate, and returned to fix the problem.

This means finishing the rail clearways program, investing in a substantial increase in rolling stock, simplifying ticketing into a time based and zonal system like every other civilised transport network, having concessions that don’t penalise part-time low income workers with high marginal transport costs and providing more than Mickey Mouse Metros that won’t come online until this city is well and truly gridlocked.

Working people and business rely on a reliable transport system to keep this city functioning - it is not a cost, it is an investment. It is laughable - and typical - that the Transport Minister reaches for the Orwellian spin of a phrase such as “people are either coming back to rail or trying rail for the first time, and it is important that we continue to improve the experience they have”.

Well, derr! We’ve seen this coming for over ten years. The experience we have is timetables that are slower than in the 1920’s, dangerous overcrowding, poorly trained and insufficient staff, management who appears to carry incompetence as a badge of pride and a government that relies on spin doctors to deny reality.

We are well down the path of creating ghettoes where populations are stranded and isolated from employment and participating in the life of this city because they cannot access it as transport is too expensive or unavailable. The disconnect between government and the population it is supposed to serve has got to the point where the entire legitimacy of this administration is called into question.

At what point does the refusal of commuters to pay for this daily humiliation become a realistic act of civil disobedience to force the orgy of incompetence that passes as the NSW Government to live up to it’s responsibilities?

Friday, June 13, 2008

PLAY ABANDONED #23 – Welcome To Barbados And Have a Nice Day

In the fifties my Grandmother, who came from Paddington when it was a slum, worked in a match factory in Zetland, then an industrial suburb in inner southern Sydney. Her legs were stuffed for the rest of her life from mixing phosphate, but this was the post war boom, wasn’t it, and while my drunken Grandfather was off somewhere in Sydney driving a bus she threw a sickie - the West Indies were in town, and ‘Keithy’ Miller was batting.
“They had this big tall fast bowler,” she told me. “As black as the ace of spades. After the end of one over he went back to stand in front of the hill. A bloke offered him a bottle of beer; he upped and downed it all in one go. What a cheer he got from the crowd!”
These days he’d probably get banned for twelve months, while the bloke with the bottle would probably be ejected. The crowd wouldn’t cheer that. We live in conservative times, our lives controlled by yellow shirted goons with wires hanging out of their ears and IQs that match their shoe sizes.
Back in the fifties the West Indies were part of the orientalism that brought a cosmopolitan flavour to post war cricket. Australia hosted and went on a widening array of tours, more or less successfully, with nations from the Caribbean and the subcontinent, playing with a grace that was often forced to stand up under very trying circumstances.
A couple of generations later, after my Nan had become part of the working class retiring to the Central Coast of NSW, the Windies had grown into a fearsome pace battery backed by some of the most entertaining willow wielding seen in cricket. She still loved watching them.
I recall watching a NSW game against a touring West Indies side (when we used to do such things, letting touring sides get used to our wickets and thus making our domestic test matches competitive, rather than the learn-as-you-go fiascos we are presented with today, where touring sides get their act together by the second, third or - if they’re lucky enough to get one - fourth tests). It was at the SCG and Viv Richards was batting. Richards had played and missed against a NSW fast bowler, which might have been a young Geoff Lawson, and was rehearsing his shot as the bowler went back to his mark.
It was possibly Rick McCosker, fielding in the covers, who suggested to Viv that ‘you can’t hit the ball after it’s gone past you’.
The gum chewing of the Antiguan intensified and he fixed the fielder with a steely glare. Next ball was smacked about two feet to the right of the cover fielder, flying like Lord Mountbattens sandshoe to bang into the advertising hoarding in front of the [then] Paddington hill.
Richards rocked back on his haunches, resting on his bat to calmly observe that ‘you can’t field the ball after it’s gone past you either, mon’.
Which brings us to the surprising brittleness of Australia’s test campaign in the Caribbean.
On paper - and form - Australia should have won this series 3-0 by an innings in each test. It should be no contest. But it is. The Windies went close in the first test and, while never quite getting on top, weren’t disgraced in the drawn second test either. After the first days play in the third test in Barbados they appear to have a chance to take Australia cheaply in the first innings, but there is a lot of cricket left to go in this match.
Backed by a hubristic media following and a self induced air of supremacy, Australia has gathered an invincible aura about itself that was exposed a little during the Indian tour.
Has Australia, as Ricky Ponting implied about its bowling at least, come back to the pack? Or is the West Indies really improving? Caribbean commentators continue to bemoan the state of West Indian cricket, while the loss of Warne, Gilchrist and McGrath really are akin to losing Lillee, Chappell and Marsh in the early eighties. Does that mean Australian cricket is set for something akin to the wilderness years we experienced in the eighties?
Probably not, but the Windies have indeed lifted while Australia is not as certain of it’s status as it has been. A lot rests on the performance of the new spinner, Beau Casson.
Just as the Indians took a moral victory out of the tied test series in Australia last summer, the Windies ability to tie this series could see some serious soul searching - especially regarding Ponting’s captaincy - amongst the Australians and could herald something of (yet another) renewal for the formerly dominant West Indies.
But these signs have emerged before, after a win in South Africa and their most recent drawn (two test) series against Sri Lanka.
West Indian cricket - facing, as it does, the cultural onslaught from North America via cable TV to pull kids to Basketball, Athletics and Baseball - probably is terminal, but Indian cricket isn’t. They’re flogging all comers at the moment, and will take great glee in watching the Australians struggle.
The Australian cricket team is mortal after all. And my dead grandmother would be cheering for the West Indies today if she could. She always had a lot of time for the underdog - you get that working in a match factory in Zetland - and, if we lived in more enlightened times, someone would give Daren Powell a bottle of beer.

Methuselah, playing uppishly behind point

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

John Della-Bosca's Election Adventure

Mr John Della-Bosca, the St George boy who made the seachange to Woy Woy Bay, has been in the news lately - which prompts me to republish a piece from ten years ago that features a bit of history regarding Della and his partner Ms Neal, and a bit of nostalgia for old times that some may find interesting.

JOHN DELLA-BOSCA’S ELECTION ADVENTURE

October 1998.

When Kim Beazley gave his address to the party faithful on election night he went out of his way to single out for praise the General Secretary of the New South Wales Branch of the ALP, Mr John Della-Bosca. This was the first clue that Mr. Della-Bosca himself was already at the forefront of discussion within the ALP.

The praise itself was extraordinary. The ALP had performed remarkably well in Queensland and Western Australia, and had achieved a clean sweep in Tasmania, yet if there was ever an area where they stumbled it was in the marginal seats in the big eastern states. Della-Bosca, whose branch picked up a mere two seats, is elevated above the more successful party structures of the smaller states. What is going on?

The divisions within the ALP that coalesced around John Della-Bosca have an interesting history. Their public manifestation reveals the increasing stresses, external and internal, that face the dominant right wing faction in NSW.

The internal pressures publicly appeared in the once all powerful faction a few years ago with the formation of the so-called ‘Terrigals’ - a faction within the right that likes to see itself as more sophisticated than the more traditional right-wing supporters in NSW, known as the Trogs. It’s greatest success was gaining the defection of the prominent left-winger Peter Knight, now the NSW Olympics Minister [and what a success he was!].

That in itself was an indirect result of another problem that the faction faces - attracting bright young talent. There is a school of thought that Della-Bosca, and his deputy - Assistant Secretary Eric Rozendal, are not a patch on recent predecessors such as Stephen Loosely and Graeme Richardson, even in purely administrative terms. While there are many in both the faction and the broader party that are relieved that the right no longer relies on individuals like Tom Domican and institutions like the Balmain Welding Company, there hasn’t been the convincing replacement of these traditional methods with a more forceful intellectual competence.

Graeme Richardson himself, along with former Keating staffer, Peter Barron, are also understood to be offside with Della-Bosca. This is primarily over the New South Wales Branch’s decision to dump their long term advertiser, John Singleton. But this conflict all gravitates back to Singleton’s mate Kerry Packer. So any moves by Richardson or Barron would receive little support from within the ALP.

Along with this has been a number of preselection battles among competing right wingers. These have primarily been at a state level but it also popped up in the federal seat of Lindsay.

The whole situation hasn’t been helped by loose cannons within the right. the obvious example is Mark Latham. An intellectually vain man, it begs the question of political intelligence for an individual to publicly attack a Federal Leader who has achieved arguably the parties greatest result short of winning government. In doing so he was trying to go into bat for Della-Bosca who was under criticism immediately after the election from outside of NSW as well.

The Left was able to harness Right Wing trade union support on the floor of the NSW ALP state conference in 1997 - thereby rolling the NSW governments electricity privatisation proposals. This was probably the most significant achievement of the Left in NSW since the introduction of Proportional Representation in internal ALP ballots in NSW in the early seventies. The position of Della-Bosca’s Sussex Street machine went down with that of the Premier, Bob Carr.

The unthinkable had happened. The NSW Right had been rolled.

The Left in NSW, through Damian O’Connor, the Assistant State Secretary in NSW, were able to use industrial links that had strengthened during the waterfront dispute. The industrial wing of the Labor movement in NSW noted the absence of Sussex Street apparatchiks in important areas of that dispute. It seemed strange politics for the Right that at a time when the political and industrial wings of the faction were splitting that the titular head of the Sussex Street machine, Della-Bosca, should alienate important sections of their own base. The influence of the Sussex Street machine has also been assailed from interstate in a dispute that has been described as the ‘Rugby League’ states versus the so called ‘Southern’ states. The primary focus of this opposition is the Victorian Right. But Robert Ray and his pals have little to crow about after their own branch’s dismal performance on October 3.

Which brings us back to the recent federal election. Della-Bosca had criticisms of his own, especially about the ALP’s capital gains tax policy. Sources within the ALP revealed that Della-Bosca voiced such criticisms at NSW Branch Administrative Committee meetings immediately prior to the election. He has also described subsequent criticisms of himself as cowardly and challenged his detractors to come out publicly.

Della-Bosca has identified a whispering campaign against him that goes right to the top of the ALP. There are allegations that Kim Beazley made off the record comments about Della-Bosca while briefing journalists late in the campaign. A lot of the whispers surround Della-Bosca’s role in the campaign of his wife, the former senator for NSW Belinda Neal, in the marginal NSW seat of Robertson.

Robertson, which was held by former Hawke government minister Barry Cohen and NSW left-winger Frank Walker, covers the NSW Central Coast. Based on Gosford it is an area that in the last 10 years become the outer northern suburbs of Sydney.,

Della-Bosca and his wife, Neal, live in the seat. He was attracted to the area after working on the Peats By-election in the 80’s. Peats being a state seat wholly within the boundaries of Robertson based on the area around Woy Woy.

Neal’s pre-selection raised some interesting developments. The right propped up it’s support within the electorate by establishing the Peninsula Branch of the ALP, a daytime branch based on the Woy Woy/Ettalong/Umina area. The branch itself has been suspected of irregularities since it’s formation. The branch also appears to be remarkably close to the Catholic Parish of Woy Woy - raising the spectre of sectarian tensions that still linger beneath the surface of ALP, especially in areas like the Central Coast with a significant population of elderly retirees.

The NSW Branch Secretary was publicly accused by the Liberal State member for Gosford, Chris Hartcher, of focussing on Robertson in the latter part of the campaign to the detriment of the ALP’s broader NSW campaign. Hartcher slated Della-Bosca for ‘taking his eyes off the ball’, and said that the ALP had spent $75 000 on radio advertising alone during the final weeks of the campaign. Other local branch sources pointed to the highly personalised nature of the Neal campaign that focussed on the candidate with any mention of the ALP’s name being largely invisible. This also served to alienate the local party rank and file.

Other whispers emerged that the resources thrown into Robertson were greater than that thrown at other NSW marginal seats. Hughes and Lindsay, two of the other seats implied by these whispers, certainly faced the problem of unpopular or inadequate candidates, but Macquarie, Parramatta and Eden-Monaro are seats where extra resources may have changed outcomes, and where disaffection with Sussex Street may be harder to ameliorate.

Certainly Della-Bosca retains some powerful friends in senior ALP ranks, including Michael Lee and Laurie Brereton who will most certainly be in Beazley’s shadow cabinet, but the impact of all this tension may be harder for John Della-Bosca to deal with as a whole.

In all of it it’s hard to escape the fact that the once pivotal NSW Right is, through a combination of factors, on the slippery slope of internal division. The full extent of this may not be fully revealed until after the NSW state election, especially if the Carr government performs poorly,.

All in all it will make internal ALP politics less predictable in the months ahead. Even so, Della-Bosca’s position should be secure for now. Besides, Kim Beazley singled him out for praise on election night. I guess that this means he enjoys the opposition leaders total support.

Doesn’t it?

Of Course Beazley (and Latham) are long gone, and we now have a Federal ALP Government, and ten years have passed before we got to that. But the seeds of the devolution that is the Iemma Government can be seen here (cronyism, a lack of talent, hubris). The Iguanas incident is just fluff and nonsense, and Della Bosca may be one of the more capable members of Iemma's cabinet - but that isn't saying much. The greater issue is the sustainability of the ALP. Decades of self serving 'look at me' types rising like effluent to the surface of a very shallow gene pool have exposed something that may yet be terminal for Labor. As a party it attracts and promotes some of the worst types imaginable, with the populace as a whole suffering as a result. This is not the sole domain of the ALP. The Liberals have an equally dire problem on the talent front, especially at a state level. It's the logical end game of zero sum Machiavellian machine politics that dominate our major parties. This society faces some big problems, and fixers with their eye on the election cycle ain't gonna solve them. Exhibit A in this regard is Mr John Della Bosca. Thanks mate.